In recent years, the popularity of the Internet has been increasing dramatically. Every day, more and more home users, small business users and large corporations are connecting to the Internet to improve communication. The term "Internet" (upper-case "I") refers to that particular global communications network that is in use around the world and that grew out of a U.S. Department of Defense funded research project named the ARPANet. Currently, most of the Internet is commercially owned and is an extremely complex, highly redundant network of telecommunications circuits that are connected together with routers. The "Internet" refers to a particular network of communications networks, while, in general, any interconnection of networks may be termed an "internet" (lower-case "i"). The "Internet" is one example of an "internet". Currently, the Internet is used for a variety of services including communication, education, news, advertising, reference materials, broadcast like media, financial services, and other.
The Internet may be described in a very simplistic sense as follows. There are six major global telecommunications carriers each of which maintains a global telecommunications network. Examples of these global carriers are companies such as SPRINT or MCI. These global carriers have links between each of their networks to allow communication between the networks. Companies termed Internet service providers (ISPs) lease access to these global networks from one of the global carriers and provide this access to their customers such as businesses, universities and individuals. These ISPs maintain their own IP (Internet protocol) networks that are connected to the Internet. An IP network of an ISP allows an ISP to establish a presence in many different locations around the country, so that customers will have local dial-in access or a short leased-line access to the IP network. Once a customer gains access to the IP network, he or she has access to the Internet. In reality, a hierarchy of local access providers, network service providers, and network access providers provide a link from a customer to the Internet.
In general, it can be said that connecting a computer or computer network to the Internet is not a simple task. Many configuration variables must be taken into account including whether the computer is a single host at a home, or is part of a local area network (LAN) in a corporation, whether a customer desires a dynamic or static IP address, and what type of line connection the customer desires. In general, a customer connects to the Internet using either a dial-up telephone line, or a more permanent leased line connection. Most home or casual use customers connect to the Internet through a dial-up line using a modem, while corporate or heavy use customers often connect with a permanent leased line connection.
Another distinction between customers relates to the type of address on the Internet used by the customer. An IP (Internet protocol) address represents a communications end point. This may or may not correlate to a user. For example, time-sharing or multi-user systems have many users per address. Typically though, each end point will have a unique IP address (or IP number or "dotted quad"). Each IP address has four parts separated by dots, e.g., "101.100.2.2", and is a 32-bit number. A router that directs information to various end hosts has an IP address such as "101.100.2.1", where the last part will be a unique number identifying the end hosts that are attached to the router. For example, for three hosts connected to such a router, these hosts may have IP addresses of 101.100.2.2, 101.100.2.3, and 101.100.2.4.
A home or casual use customer who only dials up to connect to the Internet occasionally, may only need a dynamic or temporary address for that session only. This dynamic IP address is unique for that user for only a particular transaction. Once the user has disconnected from the Internet, the dynamic IP address may be reassigned to another user. However, providers of services or information on the Internet require a permanent or static IP address so that other users may access this information at any time using a known address. Corporate customers having a web site and a domain name may also require one or more static IP addresses. Another configuration variable is that customers may choose between a variety of types of connections to the Internet that are offered by an ISP. For example, a casual use customer may choose to use a modem on a dial-up line to access the Internet, or may choose to use an ISDN (integrated services digital network) adapter in order to access the Internet over a dial-up ISDN line. A corporate or heavy use customer may wish to utilize a permanent leased line connection to the Internet that uses frame relay technology for high-speed access.
Thus, there are complexities and difficulties involved with connecting a computer or LAN to the Internet and configuring the computer or LAN for communication with the Internet. One such difficulty is that routers both at the ISP and in the customer's computer must be configured correctly. At the ISP, a trained network operator is available for entering configuration information into the router such as the IP address of a customer, an account number, etc. Other configuration information that must be entered includes telephone numbers to dial, passwords, packet filter rules, LAN network information, domain name information, e-mail configuration, compression parameters, etc. Once this is done, however, the customer must be told of this information and then must manually enter this same information into his own networking hardware in order to configure a router, for example. This duplicity of entering information is tedious for the customer, and is prone to errors. Also, a configuration will be different depending upon whether a customer wishes to access the Internet using a modem, an ISDN line, a frame relay circuit, or other high-speed line.
Furthermore, connecting a LAN is considerably more difficult than connecting a single host as it requires the correct installation and configuration of a wide variety of interrelated systems. By way of example, routers, firewalls, DNS servers and DHCP servers, etc. must all be configured correctly before the LAN can successfully communicate with the Internet. Connecting a LAN is an all-or-nothing proposition. The minimum equipment necessary includes a firewall, router, and DNS server. Configuring this equipment correctly typically requires an IP networking engineer. This fact represents a significant obstacle to the wide adoption of Internet technologies, particularly amongst the majority of small business organizations. Internet service providers relying on the current state-of-the-art in networking equipment are unable to engage any customers but the technical elite.
Therefore, the automation of the setup of a full-service IP LAN network for communication with the Internet is desirable. It would further be desirable to have an Internet access device and configuration process for configuring a computer system to communicate with the Internet that is not prone to error and that is secure. It would be further desirable for this configuration process to be automatic, and for the configuration process to be able to use the existing infrastructure of the Internet in order to retrieve configuration data from any location. It would further be desirable if a customer need only perform a minimum of tasks and need only enter a minimum of information into such an Internet access device in order for that device to be automatically configured for communication with the Internet.